Sex in the Caribbean: Environmental change drives evolutionary change -- eventually

Sex in the Caribbean: Environmental change drives evolutionary change -- eventually

www.physorg.com

Hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific, report researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for extinction, millions of years later.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Ok, let's try this again. Apparently I broke the initial submission somehow and the mods deleted it. *shrug*

Anyway, what I found interesting about this was that it shows a built in contengency in the reproductive cycle of these organisms. They can close or reproduce sexually. Normally, this would be a yawner, until you read further and see that cloning is expensive, but fast and reliable. Sex is cheaper (well, not really, but you can save up for it) and much more reliable, but slower. I wonder at what level of organism this breaks down or is no longer used. Can you imagine if humans could self-clone, or if women could become spontaneously pregnant with their own clone in certain situations?

www.physorg.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by rogerstigers


well, there have been cases the past couple years of captive sharks becoming spontaneously pregnant. Nature is pretty weird....check this out...

A small group of people from one caribbean would be born as females and then during puberty actually grow male sex organs and live the rest of their lives as men. Sounds crazy, but it's totally true. Maybe it's something in the water around the caribbean.

also, isn't that what supposedly happened to grey aliens...they have no sex organs, they just make new ones using raw genetic material....

I had sex in the Caribbean once...

Got a terrible sunburn.